What Ted Cruz knows

What you just heard was the sound of a thousand eyeballs rolling in Washington and Austin, where the freshman senator’s transparent ambition and self-regard have earned him more than a few detractors during his first few months in office.

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Ted Cruz gets Blitzed

But Cruz, the target of elite finger-wagging after his threat to filibuster gun control legislation and his ostentatiously rough questioning of Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel earlier this year, is plainly undeterred by the disapproval of the political class. Whether he’s currently mulling a 2016 run in May of 2013 may not be nearly as interesting as another question: With barely four months in the Senate under his belt, what the heck is Ted Cruz up to anyway?

Some signs of 2016 intrigue are there, if not overwhelmingly compelling ones. He’ll travel Friday to the early presidential primary state of South Carolina to keynote the local GOP’s annual Silver Elephant Dinner, an occasion headlined last year by Florida Sen. Marco Rubio. The conservative magazine National Review declared Wednesday that Cruz is mulling a White House bid in 2016, just in case his actions didn’t speak for themselves.

But sources close to Cruz say that actually building a national campaign is far from the top of his mind at the moment. He’s not placing regular phone calls into Iowa and New Hampshire, unlike his Senate colleague Rand Paul of Kentucky, or — according to sources — former Pennsylvania senator and 2012 primary runner-up Rick Santorum. Unlike Rubio, who is pouring political capital into the immigration reform debate, Cruz isn’t gambling his career on some landmark legislative push.

Instead, if Cruz, 42, is not taking out filing papers just yet, he’s doing whatever he can to prolong and intensify his moment as the golden boy of the right. The Princeton and Harvard Law graduate is keenly aware of his place within the national politico-media complex. As much as any up-and-coming Republican, he has proven adept at exploiting the forces that propel GOP politicians to success in the Obama era. And he knows it.

As Ted Cruz dips his ankle further into the water of national politics, he seems preternaturally confident about the path ahead. Does he know things that his most vocal critics don’t? Yes — and here are four examples:

It was only a few years ago — early in the 2010 cycle — that Cruz was assembling a campaign for attorney general of Texas. That race ended quickly, when Gov. Rick Perry chose to run for reelection and pre-empted a game of musical chairs among statewide officeholders.

That Cruz finds himself in a position of unquestioned national prominence in 2013 is an extraordinary reversal of fortune for the former Texas solicitor general. Cruz’s advisers say he’s determined to exploit the opportunity for everything it is worth.

In his Senate race last year, Cruz figured out how to harness the power of ideological outside groups and conservative media, and deliver an uncompromising, slash-and-burn message to the base in order to fell a better-funded, better-known primary opponent. Cruz’s youth and overt ambition did nothing to slow him down.